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Design evolution of the Windows control panel

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Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel

#71

Post by MrPatan »

beardedscotsman wrote: post #36

I was involved in part with the Windows 8 control panel refresh. What a nightmare it was working with that team. There was just no care for actually improving user experience, everything was shoehorned into the modern ui mainly as a push for ARM windows devices which were so slow they just never took off. MS wanted to force an enclosed ecosystem like apple iOS, but just didn’t have the hardware to make it happen. I r…

And why oh why does the Microsoft Xbox Elite 2 controller (which is not cheap!) can't keep a bluetooth connection open with a Windows computer to save its life, but connects flawlessly to the "Xbox wireless connector" usb dongle?

Here's an idea: take that wireless controller thingy, the logitech thingy that talks to the keyboard and mouse, and the jabra one that moves audio between a headset and base, put them all inside the computer instead of in dongles, call it "greentooth" and charge people whatever you want for it.

Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel

#72

Post by numpad0 »

vardump wrote: post #51
bob1029 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what happens when you have too many chefs in the same design kitchen. Microsoft really could use some product/UX zealot in the driver seat for a while. They should also work on reducing the latency of their products in general... Everything feels like laggy trash now. Someone should do a study on stress levels between windows XP and windows 11 user groups for basic daily office tasks and then throw it into th…

"Microsoft really could use some product/UX zealot in the driver seat for a while." I hate to say this, but I think it would just result yet another UX camp in the system. The weight of legacy is heavy. To clean up the UI mess, Microsoft would need to heavily deprecate supported APIs and conventions, and I don't think that's going to happen.

That'll also legit lead to customers leaving Windows. Just last week I had to assign multiple IP addresses to a same interface, which is totally legit operation, and I firmly believe it will be too much to ask highly skilled UX designers to also be aware of every such minute details as that an interface can have multiple IPs or that PostScript is an Adobe trademark across the whole scope of Windows Control Panel.

Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel

#73

Post by jpalomaki »

clavicat wrote: post #45

The control panel was solved, so to speak, once they added a search interface. It doesn’t matter how complicated the hierarchy of modules is if what you want is only a search away. Only Microsoft could unsolve a solved problem by segregating the settings into two paradigms, neither of which is a superset of the other. Even the duplicated functionalities are not equivalent—the list of programs you can uninstall with t…

For an outsider it is difficult to imagine how big task it is to rebuild the control panel experience. It's not just the things Microsoft has created. There's plenty of 3rd party stuff that integrates to the control panel applets and brings its own UI elements there.

Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel

#74

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

dusted wrote: post #57

Windows 2000 control panel was perfect. I'd take pretty much any of the interfaces over the abominiation that is windows 10 control panel. It's form over function so hard it hurts, in a place where function is all I want. I'm not on a "journey" or having an "experience" or whatever they're aiming for. I just want to change a setting, so show me ALL the settings programs, RIGHT NOW. It's laughable how much you need to…

Windows 2000 was something of a local maximum of UI. I contend you simply can't do much better without completely changing the paradigm. While the underpinnings of Windows have improved since then, the UI only continues to go backwards and it's a real shame.

Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel

#75

Post by bni »

dusted wrote: post #57

Windows 2000 control panel was perfect. I'd take pretty much any of the interfaces over the abominiation that is windows 10 control panel. It's form over function so hard it hurts, in a place where function is all I want. I'm not on a "journey" or having an "experience" or whatever they're aiming for. I just want to change a setting, so show me ALL the settings programs, RIGHT NOW. It's laughable how much you need to…

I agree about Windows 2000, it was the pinnacle of Windows UI.

The font, buttons and how everything is spaced is just perfect. I wish we could have a minimalistic Windows, that have this UI.

Just x3, x4 integer scaling so it can display on modern screens.

No crapware included by default. And then you download software you need form the net, like browsers, mailclient, torrent client, games, or what ever you need.

Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel

#76

Post by SkeuomorphicBee »

alkonaut wrote: post #38

The old one that people praise isn't that good. It does all the things it needs to, but it uses eight layers of popup dialogs, it works poorly at DPI's over 150% and so on and so forth. Basically, a 2005 Windows UI is mostly a bad windows UI. The proper solution would have been to refresh the old one. Make a full-featured control panel that uses just slightly more modern UI paradigms and technologies. And with zero w…

> [...] Basically, a 2005 Windows UI is mostly a bad windows UI.

It is good to look back at what they did wrong, but also what they did right. For me the most notable things:

BAD: too many windows and dialogs. The 90s GUI paradigm was all about pumping out a new window or dialog for every interaction or feature. In this regard Microsoft Windows was actually the least offender, most Unixes and Macs went even further and had each toolbar on its own window, it was madness. In this regard modern single-window apps are much better, the modern tabbed web browsers being the best example (I love that even the config dialog was turned into a tab).

GOOD: the clear visual separation of "layers". Modern GUIs are too flat for their own good, there is little visual cues separating the app window vs app content, everything has almost the same off-white background so the app toolbars and the app content sit on the same visual domain. The late 90s Windows had a very clear distinction: content have white background, app (window,menus,toolbar,widgets,...) had grey background, so the eye was automatically drawn to the one you wanted. Looking at the screenshots in the article the difference is jarring, the Windows XP/8/10 panels are mostly visually flat, there is nothing guiding your eyes to what you want (content vs toolbars), while the 95/98/2000/ME and Vista had clear visual layers.

Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel

#77

Post by johnwalkr »

beardedscotsman wrote: post #36

I was involved in part with the Windows 8 control panel refresh. What a nightmare it was working with that team. There was just no care for actually improving user experience, everything was shoehorned into the modern ui mainly as a push for ARM windows devices which were so slow they just never took off. MS wanted to force an enclosed ecosystem like apple iOS, but just didn’t have the hardware to make it happen. I r…

In windows 11, clicking the wifi icon shows a list of available networks to connect to. I can’t seem to remember that clicking on the Bluetooth icon doesn’t give a list of devices but simply switches Bluetooth off.

Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel

#78

Post by [deleted] »

pjerem wrote: post #47
tech-historian wrote: post #6

Hey, my son and I run this site. Cool to see it here. Thanks for stopping by!

Ho, I just thought it was some sort of random blog post then I saw your comment. Great website ! Thank you for the memories. May I suggest you to add links to archive.org downloads where the software you show is available ?

[deleted]

Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel

#79

Post by Sindisil »

canadaduane wrote: post #3
gjvc wrote: post #2

Windows 2000 was clearly the peak in this article, and (as a whole system) it did feel like it at the time. (I do wish it had included ClearType though...)

After Windows XP I always felt like they were hiding the actual control panel from me, and I no longer felt in control.

They were (and are) and, to an increasing degree, you are not.

Re: Design evolution of the Windows control panel

#80

Post by bombcar »

clavicat wrote: post #45

The control panel was solved, so to speak, once they added a search interface. It doesn’t matter how complicated the hierarchy of modules is if what you want is only a search away. Only Microsoft could unsolve a solved problem by segregating the settings into two paradigms, neither of which is a superset of the other. Even the duplicated functionalities are not equivalent—the list of programs you can uninstall with t…

I’ve come to hate the “search” option - places like Salesforce default to that even in documentation- open Admin, search “Users” - it works but you lose the spacial context and it makes it harder to “discover” related things that may solve your problem more directly.
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